make me believe
by sinkingsidewalks
Summary: "She doesn't know. She can't know. Her humanity is an untestable hypothesis." 4x15: Self Control insert, Simmons' thoughts before Daisy arrives.


Have I now officially written too many of these things? Yes. Will that stop me from writing more? No.

Title is from PVRIS' 'Ghosts'

Spoilers for 4x15: Self Control

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She runs, bloody palms slipping against the floor, her lungs gasping but aching for breath all the same. It's out of her control though, everything's gone out of her control.

The time between leaving the body – not body, it wasn't a corpse, the wreckage would be more accurate – and finding herself in the storage room is blank. She doesn't know how she got there, if she smeared a blood trail along the way, how concerned she should be about being discovered. It's all drowned out by her racing heart, the panic and the grief pumping through her veins. Now, her back presses against a door.

It wasn't him.

She can't tell if she's actually whispered the words to herself aloud or if they remain inside her mind. Her breath rattles against the tiled walls.

The handle of the blade slips and sticks in her hand. She grips it hard enough to feel the bruising forming under her skin, the press of metal into her flesh. She'd gripped it tighter as she was stabbing him. It.

A sob unfurls in her chest.

No. She's got to focus. She's got to get out of here. She's got to find Fitz.

His face flashes behind her eyes, except it's not _his_ face, it's _its_ face. Gentle, love filled eyes which turned to stone faster than she could blink, then right back to the softness just as quick. It almost stopped her. His – its – kindness was so much harder than its malice. It made her hesitate, ever so slightly.

Her hand comes up to her throat, unbidden, glancing over where he grabbed her, where the bruises will form, his fingerprints painted onto her neck. She'll be sore later. For now, she can only feel his warm fingertips against her cheek. The thumb glancing over the bone, his fingers slipping around the back of her neck, into her hair, brushing over the curve of her ear. It's how she touches him before he kisses her, where she finds her hand the moment before their lips meet more often than not.

It's agonizing.

She can't comprehend it all, can't get her mind to connect the pieces to make them make sense.

It was him, his hands, his face, his expressions, but it _wasn't_. She knows that it wasn't him, saw the mechanics, the substructure, that she ripped out of it. Yet, part of her reacts as if she just killed him. The relief of knowing that it's not still out there, impersonating him, is at even keel with the horror of having destroyed the thing she loves most. Neither one masks the other. At any other time the dichotomy would be fascinating.

Panic edges black around her vision. She forces her body through a deep breath, her escape would be futile if she passes out from shock.

Unless she can't. Unless this body's consciousness can't fail, unless the bruising will go unwritten across this skin. Unless Fitz, LMD Fitz, was right and there's a calibration error in the sensors. Just because the screen said only one LMD was detected doesn't mean that's the truth. The things have malfunctioned before.

She doesn't know. She can't know. Her humanity is an untestable hypothesis.

The revelation doesn't help her pursuit towards calm. She can't think. Can't think while the image of Fitz's body bleeding on the ground is still burned into the backs of her eyes, while she can still feel her heart staggering in her chest, begging her mind to stop.

She stumbles across the room, towards the darkness. The bottom of her shoe scuffs against the linoleum. The cool, dark corner should press some level of ease into her mind but it doesn't.

Her knees give out, her body sinking into a crouch. The sharpness of her back pressing into the wall is the only thing keeping her conscious. Tears keep pouring down her face, her throat is white hot with the pain of keeping her sobs silent.

Logically, she knows she's not dying, that her injuries aren't severe enough for that, but it feels like she is anyways. It's not even her body, not even her thundering heartbeat or grasping lungs. The wound in her thigh must be bleeding still. She can't feel it or the lump that should be forming on her forehead. No, the break isn't of skin or bone.

This wound cannot be set, nor stitched, nor soothed. It crumbles her.

But no, LMD Fitz obviously knew he was an LMD. That means his LMD was a different model than the May LMD. Surely that awareness isn't an evolution of the technology.

Her thoughts are too clouded for her to know for sure, for her to parse out the logical reasoning. Fitz would be able to figure it out with her, but the only Fitz available is a body on the floor in the other room.

For all she knows half the base is turned by now, moving along, unawares, unlike herself.

It would make sense though to have one, or a few, conscious. In case things started spiralling out of control, those aware would be able to manipulate the others back on track, back onto their target. And who would Radcliffe trust with that responsibility if not Fitz?

There wouldn't be anyone.

She can't figure it out though. The pieces of information, of understanding, settle in her mind as islands, unable to come together with one another to form any kind of idea. Her other thoughts are too quick, too frantic, formed off her baser instinct towards self-preservation. She doesn't have enough control to build any bridges.

Her breath won't settle, every other brings forward a new wave of panic, of fear, for herself, for the others, for Fitz. The cascade drowns her each time. She needs to get out of the base. There's no way for her to get out of the base, not with so many eyes watching.

Footsteps approach, the door bangs open, and a light turns off. She presses herself further into the corner, holding her sobs inside her lungs. The edge of a brick presses into the point of her shoulder blade. Ragged breathing spills across the floor, then a quiet, gut sinking gasp. Daisy.

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Let me know what you think in the comments and as always I'm around to chat on tumblr sinkingsidewalks.

Also, if you're reading my spec fic, Crumbling Landscapes, the next chapter should be up later tonight or tomorrow morning!


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